- By Tom Pick
- In In Person Events
- Posted August 3, 2022
Eight Fun Team Building Activities to Enhance Collaboration in Student Organizations
All types of campus organizations, clubs, and groups face a common challenge: how to continually welcome new members and get everyone working together quickly. Team building activities are an ideal way to address this issue in a fun, engaging way.
Team building programs help young leaders develop their own skills while also improving communication, collaboration, and relationship building among group members. Different types of programs also provide other benefits:
- Games and activities combine collaboration within teams with fun competition across teams. The focus is on improving collaboration and interpersonal skills in a low-stress environment.
- Scavenger hunts bring together the elements of team building with the opportunity to explore and learn about a new campus in a fun and challenging way.
- Community giveback programs expand upon the benefits of team building by adding in a charitable component. They are collaborative assembly activities with a social purpose, supporting local organizations that help the disadvantaged. These events create emotionally powerful, memorable experiences for participants.
Indoors or outside, in-person or virtual, there are a wide variety of games, activities, scavenger hunts, and charitable programs that are excellent for developing student leaders and increasing team effectiveness, quickly. Here are eight great ideas.
Activities and Games
Participants are put in the shoes of trainees studying to become elite detectives. To succeed, they must work together to solve a series of puzzles and challenges designed to test creative thinking, problem-solving, ingenuity, and deductive reasoning. Collaboration is vital: teams will not be able to complete the challenge without collaborating with their fellow partner agency trainees along the way.
Groups are formed into teams via fun and fast-paced icebreakers that get people laughing, then tasked with building a bridge out of only cardboard and duct tape that has the structural integrity to support the entire group for team pictures. (Yes, it can be done—but it takes teamwork.)
A fantastic program for engineering, architecture, and design students in particular, Momentum is an inventive team building event where each sub-team will be tasked with designing and building a Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction machine—from items such as board game pieces, plastic piping, toy car tracks, dominoes, and marbles—to accomplish a simple task, like popping a balloon. Teams must collaborate and strategize together to not only create a successful contraption but also to out-design other teams.
Online and Outdoor Programs
Can’t get the entire team together in one place? These escape rooms are secure, no-install, virtual events that work on all screen-share platforms. Participants will need to use the information concealed in their virtual surroundings by carefully inspecting the objects they find, interacting with them, finding clues, solving puzzles, and deciphering codes. This delivery method allows the flexibility to provide an activity for small to very large groups in multiple locations across the country or even across the world.
An Orientation SmartHunt® is a fantastic activity for new students to experience campus in a unique way through shared laughter, exploration, learning, fun, and strategy building. Photo missions, video challenges, and trivia questions guide teams on an orienteering scavenger hunt around their new campus. Fully customizable, this activity enhances the ability of educators, student leaders, youth workers, college orientation coordinators, and others to meet the needs of incoming students.
Race Car Rally is an exciting event of fast-paced, racing-related activities that enable teams to construct race-worthy cars on weighted Lego® car platforms. The object is to be the team to build the fastest racecar. Teams score points through challenges on provided iPads®. Points are used to purchase the parts they need for their car build from our “race car store.”
Community Giveback
Great for theater, arts, and music students, as well as any group interested in a socially conscious activity, Build-a-Guitar® is our trademarked music program featuring guitar kits specially designed for your group to be able to assemble beautiful guitars in about an hour. Through this program, over a thousand guitars have been built and donated to underfunded middle and high school music programs and youth organizations.
In addition to a case, each guitar comes complete with audio cable, a personal amplifier, a tuner, a guitar strap, and picks, so any musically inclined members of your teams can test them out. Whenever possible, a representative from the school or local charity receiving the donation will attend the end of the event to speak with your group and thank them for their generous donation.
Another great activity for social good, Donation Nation Care Packs is a wonderful program for charity in which your group navigates through a series of engaging activities leading up to the assembly of care packages for people in need. Care package items are chosen based on the specific needs of that organization. Recipient examples include homeless shelters, food banks, hospices, animal shelters, nursing homes, and other community and social service agencies.
In Conclusion
Team building programs help young leaders develop their skills while enhancing collaboration and communication among members of the campus club or organization.
These experiences can be held indoors, outside, or online, and serve purposes beyond improving interpersonal skills.
The variety of fun team building programs available for college administration and student teams can include elements of physical activity, problem solving, campus exploration, and giving back to local community organizations.
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